Macau: July Revenue Down 3.6%; Eyes On August Recovery

By Shuli Ren

The Macau government published the casino industry’s gross gaming revenue today. In July, Macau collected 28.4 gross gaming revenue, or an equivalent of 917 million daily table win, down 3.6% from a year ago.

To be sure, this is not a great statistics, but the decline is already expected and priced in. Analysts expect Macau’s July revenue to decline somewhere between 7% and flat. The 3.6% decline is right in the middle.

Macau’s July numbers were clouded by the World Cup. Chinese are avid soccer fans and prefer to stay home and stare at the TV instead of out gaming. So now all eyes are going to be on the August weekly numbers, to fathom if Macau can bounce back. “Investor anxiety could increase if revenues don’t step back up, as estimates for August and September are predicated on revenues increasing to MOP 1,050MM/day,” commented Wells Fargo analyst Cameron Mcknight. As a recap, in July, the average daily revenue was MOP 917 million.

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Emerging markets have been synonymous with growth, but the outlook for individual nations is constantly changing. Countries from Brazil and Russia to Turkey face challenges including infrastructure bottlenecks, credit issues and political shifts. Barrons.com’s Emerging Markets Daily blog analyzes news, data and research out of emerging markets beyond Asia to help readers navigate the investment landscape.

Barron’s veteran Dimitra DeFotis has been blogging about emerging market investing since traveling to India and Turkey. Based in New York, she previously wrote for Barron’s about U.S. equity investing, including cover stories and roundtables on energy themes. Dimitra was among the first digital journalists at the Chicago Tribune and started her career as a police reporter at the Daily Herald in the Chicago suburbs. Dimitra holds degrees from the University of Illinois and Columbia University, where she was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in the business and journalism schools. She studies multiple languages and photography.